Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993) is once again hot news.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of his death and, as
detailed by his eponymous Foundation’s own website (see
here), many of the world’s leading ballet companies are marking
the fact. As the dancer/choreographer/producer was closely associated
with both London and Paris, it is hardly surprising that it is those
two capitals that account for the majority of the commemorative events.

Nureyev was both an intensely charismatic and a polarising figure in
the world of dance. But he was also, in one respect, exceptionally fortunate.
Even though occasional attempts to put him on a par with the likes of
the Beatles or Andy Warhol as a 1960s cultural icon do seem somewhat
far fetched, his fame - and, indeed, his later notoriety - did extend
way beyond the rarefied world of ballet. From the very day of his defection
to the West at Paris’s Le Bourget airport in June 1961, dramatically
defying the KGB’s attempts to entice him onto a plane back to
Moscow, Nureyev was always hugely newsworthy. As a consequence, he was
far more often filmed, both in his normal everyday life and, thankfully,
in performance, than any other dancer of his generation.

Warner Classics’ nod to the 20th anniversary is a box
set of three Nureyev filmed performances/productions, conveniently -
if, as we shall note later, not necessarily felicitously - collected
together and available both on Blu-ray and DVD.

Nureyev as dancer and choreographer (“after Petipa”) is
to be found in the earliest material. It’s a rather odd feature
film, made for cinema, of the ballet Don Quixote, far more of
a rarity on the stage in 1972 but thankfully becoming much better known
these days. I reviewed this disc just last year - see
here. For now, then, I will merely repeat that a jet-lagged Nureyev,
suffering, moreover, in the intense Australian heat, appears not to
gel with a cast that was, to be fair, largely unknown to him. His partner
Lucette Aldous gives a comparatively low-key performance that may well
disappoint anyone familiar with the flashy pyrotechnics of, say, Nina
Ananiashvili or, more recently, Natalia Osipova. Meanwhile, John Lanchbery’s
unnecessary and sometimes rather crude and vulgar tinkerings with the
score may well have been at Nureyev’s request but do, nevertheless,
a real disservice to Minkus’s beautifully crafted music.

The disc’s partially redeeming features - a splendid contribution
from Robert Helpmann, some imaginative camerawork and a thorough restoration
process what has brought the original colours back to life quite superbly
for this reissue - along with the desirability of watching, at least
once, anything in which Nureyev performed, mean, though, that it need
not necessarily be ruled entirely out of court.

Neither of the other two performances in this set showcases Nureyev
the dancer. In September 1983 he had taken up the post of Artistic Director
at the Paris Opera Ballet and had gone on to mount his own new productions
of, among others, Romeo and Juliet (1984) and La Bayadère
(1992). Discs 2 and 3 of this set contain Paris performances of those
two. Both, it is true, were recorded after Nureyev’s death. But
both feature dancers with whom he had personally worked and both were
recorded sufficiently shortly after his death for his influence to be
still apparent. This set’s Romeo, for instance, is Manuel Legris,
a particularly favoured protégé who had enjoyed a spectacular
rise to prominence in the Paris company under Nureyev’s patronage.
Within just six years of joining the ranks of the corps de ballet
in 1980, the 21 year old completely bypassed the intervening rank of
Premier Danseur when Nureyev, in a dramatically contrived moment
on stage in front of a wildly applauding New York audience and to the
surprise of everyone, not least Legris himself, personally promoted
him from Sujet to the highest company rank of Etoile.

Taking the earlier of these recordings, La Bayadère, first,
I have to agree with my colleague Dave Billinge who described the production
- with choreography by Nureyev, once again “after Petipa”
- as “spectacular to look at, brilliantly costumed (literally)
and with magnificent sets to act as background to some top class dancing.
All the principals are at the top of their profession and the large
corps de ballet has a level of precision that leaves one breathless
- Classical ballet par excellence - ” (see
here). I would certainly second all those points but I beg to differ
with some of the others that Dave goes on to make. Some of my disagreements
are minor and subjective and nothing to do with Nureyev at all. I find
Minkus’s score, for instance, far more enjoyable - and well constructed
for Petipa’s choreographic requirements - than Dave does. Similarly,
I espouse what is almost certainly a minority opinion in considering
La Bayadère’s “real life” drama to be
rather more involving than the supernatural fantasticalities of Dave’s
beloved Swan Lake.
The really major objection that I have to Nureyev’s production
is that he fails to tackle the issue of the “missing” fourth
Act. While, even today, the Paris and the major Russian dance companies
choose to end the drama with flawed hero Solor’s opium-induced
vision of the celebrated Kingdom of the Shades, several other companies
now opt for Natalia Makarova’s addition of a reconstructed final
Act that brings the story to a more emotionally satisfying conclusion.
Anyone who is mainly familiar with La Bayadère through
the Royal Ballet’s two filmed productions (see here
and here)
or the splendid one from La Scala, Milan (TDK DVWW-BLLBSC), will find
the Nureyev production lacking not just a full 21 or so extra minutes
of music and dancing but a final cathartic emotional resolution to the
story. That having been said, Nureyev’s production does include
some attractive elements that Makarova did not include, most
notably a spectacular Indian dance that raises the Palais Garnier
roof and actually inspired me, back in 2005, to e-mail my enthusiastic
appreciation to the charismatic dancer Gil Isoart - whose kind but rather
succinct response read, in full, “I just watch your message thank
you very much for it.”

Moving on to the set’s final disc, the 1995 performance of Romeo
and Juliet certainly looks very good, with attractive, well lit
sets and costumes so gorgeous that even Verona’s whores must be
doing fantastic business to pay for their outfits. They and the rest
of the Paris corps de ballet dance with their usual degree of
well-executed precision, while the principals are, as one would expect,
equally skilled.

Manuel Legris’s - or, rather, Nureyev’s - conception of
Romeo is as a thoughtful dreamer, somewhat reminiscent the 1930s actor
Leslie Howard in his film interpretation. He dances beautifully and
with great grace, but lacks the sheer charisma, raw sexuality and stage
presence that Nureyev himself brought to the part. I took a little time
to warm to Monique Loudières’s Juliet, though that, I think,
is a reflection of the role itself where she is only gradually brought
to maturity by her interaction with her lover. Her technique is of the
highest quality. Of the other leading roles, I found Charles Jude’s
depiction of Tybalt as a poisonously violent psychopath particularly
effective, while Annie Carbonnel dances a more than usually jolly -
and, in the midst of all the bloody circumstances, surprisingly relaxed
and apparently stress-free - nurse.

The Paris Opera Ballet sets are surprisingly spacious, making full use
of the wide and deep stage in the crowd scenes. That makes an interesting
contrast with the famous Kenneth MacMillan Royal Ballet production in
which Nureyev himself had created the original role of Romeo in 1965.
The Scottish choreographer brings more of the action to the front of
stage where some impressive sets create darker, more claustrophobic
spaces that symbolically emphasise the characters’ pent-up, indeed,
often lethal, inner passions.

The Paris production’s musical performance comes as something
of a contrast with London too. In general, conductor Vello Päh
leads a more stately and more orchestrally-blended account, less raw
and edgy than his British counterparts: the sections of the score that
depict the ballet’s many fight sequences offer good illustrations.
That is of a piece with the two contrasting productions, for Nureyev
deliberately eschews many of the rough edges that MacMillan intentionally
chose to emphasise. On the other hand, the more refined Paris approach
pays off well in quieter, more lyrical scenes such as the “balcony”
pas de deux or the scene where the lovers implore Friar Laurence
for his help.

There are the usually encountered problems when close-ups occur in ballet.
While the theatre audience is fortunately too far away to see, a probing
camera clearly shows that “corpses” - of which Romeo
and Juliet boasts rather a lot - are breathing and our suspension
of disbelief is thereby abruptly, if only momentarily, destroyed.

The presentation of these discs is also rather questionable. Given that
they are being packaged and marketed as a unified, themed set, is it
too much to ask that the separate discs might have been provided with
a uniform identity on their front edges? I realise that doing so might
well have incurred some extra manufacturing costs, but it would at least
have avoided giving the impression that Warner Classics was simply repackaging
some old stock.

In my particular case, another area of annoyance with the finished product
was the lack of uniformity in the information that they communicated
to my DVD/Blu-Ray player. Whereas Don Quixote showed its track
number and its timing on the front panel display, both the other discs
simply generated the word PLAY. That was not the most helpful information
for a reviewer keen to pinpoint specific timings for his readers’
reference but not prepared to sit there in front of the TV screen with
an old stopwatch.

A more serious issue to bear in mind - and one that affects all three
of these discs - is that while Blu-Ray technology may well be able to
maximise the quality of the visual image, it can only maximise it to
the quality of the original recording at its best. None of these
productions had been originally filmed in high definition. Today, many
other Blu-Ray/DVD releases of this repertoire can boast HD filming and
many viewers have, perhaps sadly, come to regard that as a sine qua
non. Faced with alternatives such as the memorable and hugely enjoyable
2006 Mariinsky Ballet Don Quixote (see
here), the outstanding 2009 Covent Garden La Bayadère
or its equally attractive 2006 La Scala equivalent, and either one of
the recent Royal Ballet releases of Romeo and Juliet (see here
and here),
I suspect that many potential buyers may not even consider these older
and occasionally somewhat grainy recordings of the Nureyev productions.

That would, though, be a great shame. Rudolf Nureyev was without doubt
an egotistical, selfish and, pretty often, not even a very pleasant
man to be around. Equally, though, he was certainly a much larger than
life character who gave classical ballet a profile on the international
arts scene that it sorely lacks today.

As the current live commemorations in theatres across the world are
demonstrating, Nureyev’s legacy has certainly lived on - but it
deserves, perhaps, somewhat better recognition than is offered by this
particular box set.